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Welcome to Morcan Books & Films, the blog devoted to providing a unique perspective and intelligent commentary on books and films. It includes commentary on our own books and films – i.e. novels and screenplays co-written by the Morcans, and feature films produced by, or in development with, Morcan Motion Pictures.
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Do you believe the world as a whole is overpopulated and therefore at or close to the absolute limit of what it can support?That’s the question we put to our Underground Knowledge group members in our latest poll on Goodreads.com.

Interim poll results show that 57% of respondents believe planet Earth is not overpopulated, some 37% insist it is, and the balance (6%) are unsure.

If you enjoy living in a world with no wild animals, no wild spaces, not open frontiers but enjoy snuggling up in cramped conditions with billions of people like you eating mass produced food and if you do not care that we are facing a massive decline in variety of specis of flora and fauna, the big species extinction wave, then with all those “if”s accepted, the world is not overpopulated for you.

The world is not overpopulated, the problem is such a wretched distribution of food, of wealth, of the basic necessities of life. Much too much is concentrated in the hands of the few, of the horridly corrupt. What if we stopped these insane endless wars and used that money to put in a well, a roof over the heads of families, food on their tables, medical care? Would we not all sleep better?

The world is not Close to the Limit, it has past it.

If the world had past its limit to support life you and every other human being on the planet would already be dead…

The population of the planet has more than doubled in my lifetime. Clearly this is not sustainable. Already there are many signs of strain, in species extinctions, widespread homelessness and hunger, pollution, climate change, wars over resources, etc. There are other factors involved but overpopulation fuels them all. By any standard the planet is grossly overpopulated now. It is not just a matter of space.

There’s loads of space. That’s not a problem. We could build islands, extend coastlines, utilize currently uninhabitable spaces…We’re not overpopulated but we sure as hell need to sort out our distribution and use of resources.

Our Underground Knowledge discussion group is aimed at those with an interest in the world we live in and a desire to learn or to uncover “underground knowledge” on important issues of our times.

Everyone’s welcome to join! All you need is an enquiring mind. Our members include scientists, social activists, teachers, historians, authors, military and intelligence agency personnel, bankers, housewives, whistleblowers, students, former police officers, journalists, readers and many more.

The media regularly reminds us of the billions of dollars in aid First World governments and international aid organizations grant annually to impoverished Third World nations.

The official story goes that Western nations are extremely generous in assisting the development of the Third World. And few would argue with this summary as even when countries like the UK, Germany or the US are in an economic slump, they are never shy of giving vast sums to poorer nations in times of need.

This is especially true when it comes organizing relief efforts for natural disasters. Major catastrophes like the Pakistan floods, the Haiti earthquake and the Indian Ocean tsunami are recent examples of massive amounts of aid being raised almost overnight.

What if all this aid is not charitable, but completely selfish? What if it isn’t actually giving, but taking? What if all the generosity has serious strings attached – strings designed to fleece vulnerable nations?

And what if the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other such financial aid organizations are all gigantic scams designed to subjugate Third World countries?

Sounds ridiculous, right?

Wrong, many globalization commentators would contest.

Before we expand on this alternative version of international aid, we’d like to separate the aforementioned aid organizations and their ilk from the genuine aid and charity organizations. They are too many genuine organizations to list here, but they include the likes of Save the Children, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, CARE, Oxfam and Refugees Internationals. Whilst some of these organizations have their critics, most people would agree their intentions are noble, the services they deliver invaluable – often lifesaving – and the people delivering those services extremely conscientious and passionate about what they do.

To achieve this NWO and expand the super-secret Omega Agency, the founding members knew they needed to create enormous wealth in the quickest possible time. The easiest way to do that, in their view, was to siphon as many mineral riches as they could out of Third World countries. It was an age-old practice, tried and tested, but never before attempted on the enormous scale Omega was gearing up for. –The Orphan Factory

The alternative version of international aid suggests that money given or loaned by international aid organizations like the IMF and the World Bank is no different to banks dolling out credit cards to individual customers. And just as banks offer credit to customers so that they (the banks) can make money, this theory also suggests these big, so-called aid organizations are purely profit-motivated and not remotely charitable.

Let’s explore this comparison a little deeper…

Banks know that some customers will pay off their credit cards quickly without incurring much interest. They also know a small percentage will have to be written off as bad debts, and they allow for this in their profit forecasts. However, the vast majority of customers who take on new credit cards will be indebted to the bank for months, years or even for the rest of their lives. Some of these customers will manage, barely, while some will be completely snowed under and one step away from bankruptcy.

Banks make the bulk of their profits by keeping most of their customers in this perpetual cycle of paying off interest, and that’s why they regularly offer customers more credit – even, or especially, customers who are already having trouble getting themselves out of the debt cycle and who can least afford it.

Following this analogy, on the international stage the World Bank, the IMF and Western governments are the equivalent of smaller, personal banks, and impoverished Third World nations are the equivalent of customers accepting and using credit cards. Overall, the rules are virtually identical – foster a reliance on credit amongst those you lend to then ensure the interest rates are so extreme the debt can never be paid off.

Once poor Third World nations are beholden to lenders, First World governments and their allied corporations regularly demand favors in return. Those favors include relinquishing political control or simply turning a blind eye to the plunder of natural resources, or both. Manipulating the power structure of countries is done in a multitude of ways, including rigging elections, making under-the-table payments and organizing political assassinations.

When these nations are crushed, enslaved even, beneath mountains of debt, this creates enormous ongoing revenues for the lenders through high interest rates. It also allows for untold injustices to be perpetrated by major multinational corporations – injustices such as oil companies pumping toxins into rivers, logging companies destroying entire forests, pharmaceutical giants performing illegal human experimentation, manufacturers hiring people to work in inhumane conditions in sweat shops, and in some cases employing child labor.

“Western governments tax their citizens to fund the World Bank, lend this money to corrupt Third World dictators who abscond with the funds, and then demand repayment which is extracted through taxation from poor Third World citizens, rather than from the government officials responsible for the embezzlement. It is in essence a global transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Taxpayers around the world are forced to subsidize the lavish lifestyles of Third World dictators and highly-paid World Bank bureaucrats who don’t even pay income tax.” –Ron Paul’s statement at the World Bank Hearing, May 22, 2007

Overshadowing individual nations

Some of these dirty economic tactics used against vulnerable nations are examples of modern imperialism in action. This is especially true with the US, which as previously alluded to is in many ways the world’s last remaining superpower. With hundreds of military bases worldwide and untold intelligence agents strategically placed in almost every country on Earth, the American empire is unlike any other.

Unfortunately, America’s foreign activities all too often result in large amounts of collateral damage.

If we are ruffling any patriotic feathers in this chapter then you’re viewing it all wrong because the reality is no powerful country – be it the US or the UK, Russia or France – is immune to financial domination from the likes of the World Bank and the IMF. The recent financial austerity measures placed upon EU nations like Portugal, Greece and Spain are prime examples of this.

There’s no reason to suggest if a country like the US slipped into a deep enough economic recession that corrupt international financial organizations would not swoop to enslave Americans in a web of debt. In fact, many conspiracy theorists, and more than a few economists, believe this is already happening to America.

The key point is nearly all the decisions to commit these destructive acts against Third World countries are made above governmental level. And above countries, too. For it’s not about governments or countries, and it never was. It’s simply about the powerful global elite who secretly rule the media, the politicians, the political parties, the governments and ipso facto, the countries.

The privileged individuals and families who comprise the global elite will happily bankrupt their own countrymen, decimate their own community and evict their neighbors from houses in their desperate bid to increase their wealth.

“About 21,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every four seconds … Sadly, it is children who die most often. Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.” –Official statement on the poverty.com website as at February 2014

End poverty now – or later…or much later

If you haven’t picked up on it already, we believe world poverty can be fixed. And fixed quickly.

Some of you may be doubting our sanity about now. At the very least, you’ll be thinking we are underestimating the task at hand, and that poverty’s far too big a challenge to solve any time soon.

But consider this for a moment: the United Nations Development Program estimated in 1998 that it would only cost an additional US$40 billion above current aid payments at the time to completely eradicate poverty as we know it. This figure was broken down as per the following necessary (US dollar) payments: $13 billion extra for every person on Earth to have enough food as well as access to basic health care; an additional $12 billion to cover reproductive health for all women worldwide; $6 billion extra to provide basic education for all; and an additional $9 billion to provide clean water and sanitation for every man, woman and child on the planet.

Now that $40 billion figure was in 1998 dollars, of course, and the world’s biggest problems have arguably gotten worse since then. So let’s allow for inflation and let’s also assume the UN underestimated the amount required.

Let’s say $200 billion dollars, or five times what the UN estimated, is needed over and above current aid payments. To our eyes, that seems a small price to pay for what would undoubtedly be the greatest moment in human history.

Two hundred billion is also a fraction of the cost governments of major nations like China, the US, Russia and the UK spend on their annual military budgets. By some estimates, the Afghanistan conflict alone has cost America more than a trillion dollars, with all wars since 9/11 said to have cost America several trillion dollars. However, waging wars is clearly a far bigger priority than ending poverty.

“It’s an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. That should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it’s become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it’s difficult justify our own inaction. Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don’t have is the will, and that’s not a reason that history will accept.” –Bono, interview to the World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day. May 3, 2004.

Profiting from war

Ever wonder why peace in certain countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo is never achieved no matter how many thousands of international peacekeepers are sent?

The answer may be that despite appearances, the world’s powers-that-be don’t actually want peace in those countries to be achieved any time soon.

Engaging in diplomatic talks and sending in UN peacekeepers is just a farce, apparently. According to our research, it’s far more lucrative for the global elite to keep wars going so the invaders can plunder resources for as long as they can. If we are correct in this analysis, then maybe wars like Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam were not about winning, but something else. Something much more sinister.

More than any other region on the planet, Africa’s probably the best example of these vicious, imperialistic strategies. Unfortunately for Africa it has many, many resources the outside world wants, needs and will kill to get its hands on. Resources like its vast water reserves, unlimited land, oil and precious metals such as gold, diamonds, cobalt and uranium to name a few. Not to mention the continent’s wildlife and cheap human labor.

U2’s lead singer Bono possibly summarized it best in a 2004 speech he gave at the University of Pennsylvania when he said, “Africa needs justice as much as it needs charity.”

In The Ninth Orphan, we wrote the following pertinent paragraphs about the African continent:

As the seemingly well-intentioned French journalist spoke about Africa’s scarcity and its limited resources, Nine smiled to himself almost condescendingly. He considered such statements an absolute joke. Africa did not, nor did it ever have, limited resources.

Nine knew something the journalist obviously didn’t: Africa was the most abundantly resourced continent on the planet bar none. Like the despots who ruled much of the region, and the foreign governments who propped them up, he knew there was more than enough wealth in Africa’s mineral resources such as gold, diamonds and oil – not to mention the land that nurtured these resources – for every man, woman and child.

He thought it unfortunate Africa had never been able to compete on a level playing field. The continent’s almost unlimited resources were the very reason foreigners had meddled in African affairs for the past century or more. Nine knew it was Omega’s plan, and that of other greedy organizations, to siphon as much wealth as they could out of vulnerable Third World countries, especially in Africa.

The same organizations had the formula down pat: they indirectly started civil wars in mineral-rich regions by providing arms to opposing local factions, and sometimes even helped to create famines, in order to destabilize African countries. This made the targeted countries highly vulnerable to international control. Once the outside organizations had divided and conquered, they were then able to plunder the country’s resources.

The defeated eyes of the starving children on screen reminded Nine of his fellow orphans growing up in the Pedemont Orphanage. Although he had never experienced malnutrition, he knew what it was like to be born into a living hell.

Sadly, since The Ninth Orphan was published in 2011, not much has changed in Africa; international governments, multinational corporations and the likes of the World Bank and the IMF continue to profit from Africa’s vulnerability.

Wars in numerous African countries continue to go unchallenged and untold millions are raped, killed, maimed and starved while the rest of the world just looks on. It has become such a repetitious story in Africa that wars in the region rarely make international headlines anymore.

Conflict in Africa…all too familiar.

Divide and conquer. That’s the global elite’s proven strategy when it comes to its treatment of Third World countries in Africa and indeed throughout the world. Or, to put it another way, order out of chaos is the global elite’s favored tactic. They engineer chaos by financing both sides of revolutions, movements and civil wars then create order by providing solutions to governments and citizens in these war-torn countries.

To quote the British group James from their 2008 song Ha Ma: “War is just about business.”

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

One of the best testimonies toward this conspiracy against Third World nations is John Perkins’ 2004 bestselling book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

The book mentions how it’s no longer necessary to invade other countries to plunder their resources. Now there are other easier ways to achieve this.

Much of the old invade-and-occupy strategy has been replaced by economics.As JFK once said, it’s now about “infiltration instead of invasion,” and there are many ways to successfully infiltrate a nation. It can be done by owning politicians and thereby subtly implementing policies, or it can be done by buying a nation’s media and feeding that nation’s citizens propaganda.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man describes how mysterious independent contractors known as economic hit men cheat poor countries all over the world out of trillions of dollars. They’re paid large sums to creatively influence and/or bribe leading politicians in developing nations to make policy changes that suit multinational corporations. These policy changes usually revolve around either giving up the developing nation’s resources to offshore interests or accepting large Halliburton-esque building contracts.

Perkins describes how the main job of an economic hit man is to persuade the leaders of Third World nations to accept multi-billion dollar development loans from (guess who?) the IMF and World Bank – that’s right, the usual suspects!

Once economic hit men have carried out a hit on a nation, the US doesn’t need to invade that nation or, indeed, do anything more. The profits automatically flow into the US while all the hard work is done by the impoverished citizens of the targeted nation.

Perkins claims he was formerly one of these economic hit men and was hired by America’s National Security Agency (NSA) to carry out hits against vulnerable and mineral-rich Third World countries.

As Perkins writes in the book’s preface: “Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly-paid professionals, who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign aid organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.”

As a result of his tenure of many years as an EHM, of which he expresses much guilt, Perkins claims in the book that the developing nations he worked in were in the end crippled economically and virtually remote-controlled politically.

Interestingly, in the epilogue to the 2006 edition of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Perkins writes that the supposedly generous offer by G8 nations to wipe all Third World debt was a trick. He states the catch was that to erase all their debts these countries would be forced to privatize almost all their assets, including electricity, water, education and health. Perkins argues this would potentially leave these countries worse off in the long run.

In 2009, a documentary film titled Apologies of an Economic Hit Man was released. It includes poignant interviews with Perkins. The film, which was directed by Stelios Kouloglou, was shown at film festivals around the world.

Perkins’ confessions serve as an important reminder that the winner takes all mindset at the root of capitalism is a poison if left unchecked. That’s not to say capitalism is bad per sē, or that a more refined version of it cannot work effectively. Nor does it mean the world should move toward socialism or communism, which have both proven throughout history to be just as disastrous. But surely the world’s recent financial catastrophes and the bankrupting of individuals, families, small businesses, communities and entire nations, must make even the most ardent capitalist examine his or her beliefs.

“We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence – on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”–President John F. Kennedy, speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. April 27, 1961, New York City.

We accept that a lot of the ideas in this chapter seem very extreme. Many of our readers will no doubt find it hard, or perhaps impossible, to believe world leaders could view nations like Haiti, Somalia and Cambodia as being nothing other than money-spinners.

In attempting to understand how the global elite think, we would draw your attention to National Security Memorandum 200, a recently declassified document headed ‘Implications for Worldwide Population Growth for US Security & Overseas Interests’ and dated 10 December 10, 1974. In it, National Security consultant (and favorite of old boy networks like Bilderberg, CFR and Bohemian Grove) Henry Kissinger, states, “Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World,” to secure mineral resources for the US.

Exactly how depopulation of the Third World was to be accomplished wasn’t specified in the document. Kissinger may have favored obvious methods like keeping certain countries in perpetual states of war, famine and scarcity. Or the depopulation he encouraged could perhaps be achieved through something much more nefarious – possibly even something along the lines of the purposeful spread of AIDS, which was a conspiracy theory mentioned in chapter 15.

Either way, Kissinger’s statement is both scary and profound. If depopulation is on the table then fleecing the Third World of all its riches and keeping its citizens impoverished actually seems benign by comparison.

But listen, maybe we just don’t understand the world we’re in. Who knows, perhaps the mad pursuit of profits at all costs will eventually rid the world of poverty, and maybe certain economists, Far Right politicians and libertarians are right when they say unregulated capitalism is the answer.

Possibly that free market approach will give everybody the opportunity to become super rich no matter where they live – in which case perhaps pure capitalism without any social reforms whatsoever isn’t thebullet to the head that we common people think it is…